Overcoming Blindness

The rich man does not see Lazarus at his gate. The disciples proceeding to Emmaus do not see Jesus and think Him to be a stranger. “There is none so blind as he who will not see” is a well-known saying.

It is not that he cannot see, but he “will not see”.

This blindness of ours can arise from many sources.

The love of money may blind us to poverty on our doorstep. Racial, ethnic or religious prejudice may blind us to the need to accord dignity and respect in persons who are not of our race, ethnicity or religion. There is another, perhaps more insidious form of blindness to which we may all be subject. It arises from the institutions or circles we inhabit — our place of work, our church group, our circle of friends, our role as parents.

These institutions act to interpret and give order and meaning to the world around us. They provide us with the mental models, and the “lenses”, through which we see, interpret and judge information about the world. They determine which news sources we consume, or whether we rely on gossip and social media for our information.

Without really thinking, we find ourselves having views on, or attitudes towards, what our children wear or what music they listen to, or to Donald Trump’s presidency, the actions of Vladimir Putin, or what Pope Francis says. Such mental models are functional in that they help us to classify and make sense of people and events relatively quickly. But they can also lead to spiritual blindness.

Many politicians who are elected into government find that they get into an institutional ‘bubble’ in which the information that gets to them is filtered, their actions and responses and circumscribed, and they gradually lose touch with the people who elected them to office. The same can and does occur with CEOs and with religious leaders. It is said that: It is lonely at the top! All of us, and particularly those in positions of leadership who may be trapped in institutional “bubbles”, need to recognise the dangers of our mental models and deliberately take steps periodically to recalibrate our lenses, escape our bubbles and allow fresh information and insight to reach us.

Parents need to get into the world that their teenage children inhabit and understand what is shaping their thinking and their behaviour. Priests and religious leaders need to get into their communities and see and experience what their followers are experiencing.

Politicians need to get in touch with their constituents and not just when they engage in protests for bad roads or lack of water. Intellectuals need to read and engage honestly with views which are not consonant with their own.

But even as we seek to avoid being imprisoned by our mental models, which may be fixed by our politics, our ethnicity, or our ideology, there is one lens which ought to remain constant and clear and that is to see God in every human being we meet. We can be sure that when viewed through that lens, we are more likely to have the right view and the right interpretation of any situation we are dealing with.